Training Log Archive: jennycas

"A Silk Purse From A Sow's Ear"
Got to the arena about 8am, ran around putting out radio SI units, drove up to Tower Hill to place the mobile data unit, set up the spectator control with the elites' drinks and made sure that the OOB area for wedding setup next to it was correct, then mostly hung around the finish to keep an eye on mispunches, not that there were many (although I did feel a bit bad for anyone who punched 116 instead of 176 or vice versa - they were on boulders 90m apart along the same creekline) and suddenly it was time to set up the presentations already, so the first opportunity I had to realise that more than one of the shorter courses had been too short, was when I was handed a list of the placegetters.

There don't seem to have been any quibbles about control placement, though, and many people said that they appreciated the route choice legs which Vincent had set them. Spent 3 hours on control collecting - it took 2 trips up Tower Hill to bring back all the water (much of which hadn't been used but if the day had been sunny as originally forecast, it could have been another story) and got the last of my allocation of 17 just on sunset. We were lucky to have some interstate volunteers, as it means that Vincent & I don't have to collect any controls on Sunday!

By the time I got home I was so tired that I was practically driving on autopilot, but I was also (w)racking my brains to work out how I could have made such a rookie error as to have the W60/W16 course 33% too short in terms of the recommended winning time. Geoff was on the road to Nhill (or is it the Nhill road - who's seen that movie?) for a trailer exchange but our house guest (I haven't been a very good host this past week) kindly let me debrief, and in the end I came to the following conclusions:

1) the km rate for courses which were primarily in the open/mature pine forest was a lot faster than we had anticipated; Vincent and I had thought it wouldn't be significantly different from track options or the open farmland on Tower Hill which longer courses traversed, and any courses we test-ran had a mixture of terrains so we never specifically tested just the forest near the arena.

2) because the forest was so open, and the available control sites limited, there was very little opportunity for wider route choices on these courses, or likelihood of error on the control sites. We were aware of this, but just didn't have the same sort of technically/physically challenging terrain as Bathurst or Stanthorpe available to us. We had given some thought to making these courses a bit longer, but couldn't find a way to add distance without reducing the navigational difficulty and insulting people's intelligence.

3) because the Tower Hill ridgeline forms a natural barrier, and has very little in the way of useable features immediately over the ridgeline, it was possible to form good courses in the 6km+ range (after a lot of hard work by Vincent, who really did make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as the saying goes) and likewise for around 4km distance closer to the arena, but not easy to achieve lengths in between unless we made people go up to the ridgeline and then immediately come back down again, which they definitely would have complained about.

I've often commented that there is no penalty (except censure) for getting the winning times incorrect, but do feel that as a fairly experienced controller I should have known better. It certainly would have helped to have more time to focus on these courses instead of being so tied up with the club relays...

C • W60 17

All the rest of the controls and SI units went out today, and Geoff kindly helped with driving around to put out water. It was a beautiful sunny day but as Vincent and I were heading up there this morning, we couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to go wrong. We listed the known knowns, and the known unknowns, but couldn't come up with any unknown unknowns...until one materialised in the form of tomorrow's bride :(

Turns out that Forestry had managed to double-book us for a wedding which will be setting up only 200m from the arena, and the ceremony held literally 5m away from the spectator control! Thankfully it's not until 2pm, but the rangers had the cheek to tell me that we should have specifically booked that particular picnic area - I didn't even know that it was a bookable location or that one table in the forest constitutes a picnic ground; I mean, they had our event application, arena layout and control master map, and it should be obvious that nearby controls mean that 800 people will be running through the area, yet they claimed that since no controls were actually on the picnic ground, it could legitimately be booked by someone else, and they suggested we move our event!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

C • Sorry! 8

29 more controls (or maybe it was some of the same ones, because we couldn't have the SI units until after yesterday's event) after watching Jo/Abi/Em's emphatic win in the senior girls' relay - exciting!

29 down, 65 to go.
The orchids are out in force in the native scrub section of Gumeracha Goldfields.

C • Orchids 4

My head's so full of orienteering organisation just now that I decided on a domesticated morning @home while my car was being serviced, and since I had to collect control stands from the Aust Schools' sprint event, made it across town just in time for last start so my only warmup was riding my bike to the mechanic's (and the fact that it was 30 degrees).

See if you can work out from whom I bastardised this race description:
"Relatively clean through the early section - probably took a couple of sub-optimal routes but the fences were so complicated I figured it was better to keep moving in roughly the right direction than to stand still and puzzle it out. Suffered a bit through the 3(!) spectator controls, with Foghorn Juffshorn doing commentary from the sidelines. Back into the detail for a bit, flipped the map over and found we had an arbitrary out-and-back down into suburbia and then straight back up the hill - not convinced that was necessary, since the nav was trivial and the hill was punishing. A few more controls in the detail and then thankfully finished."

I enjoyed the course though and was pleased that I managed for half an hour to switch my brain off from worrying about everything else.

C • Blatant plagiarism 1

C • Respect! 1

Spent 3 hours putting out SI units and flags at the Renmark schools with Robin, also radio controls, then spent 3 hours patrolling the singletrack network in the saltbush patch to make sure nobody went cross-country (off-track was marked as OOB for the purposes of this event) and observing some major overshoot errors on control 130 - the depression in the thicket - for which the strike rate can have been no greater than 60% at best. By the time I came back to the arena the Aust Sprint Champs were over, and by 3 pm all controls were in, artificial fences pulled down, tents packed up and I could sit down for the first time in 8 hours...in order to drive back to Adelaide.

C • Missed you! 2

The median-aged lady was running 2nd, in a W21E team with Liv & Bridget for the 3rd year in a row. Well-set course by Simon on an amazing area with open basins and deeply-incised creeks (and the vegetation was quite helpful to read, although in some places there wasn't any). Right from the start I didn't have many people around although a few M21s came through me from time to time. Probably running a bit better than I was navigating today - but had to either watch my feet or look at the map; couldn't manage both, and it was getting quite warm out there so was at the limits of my concentration. Small hesitation on 5, lost up to a minute on 9 by being too far right/downstream, then after the spectator control picked a poor route to 12 and ballsed up 13 in the erosion gullies which I couldn't read at all, nor could I physically find my way out of afterwards. So again I would like to have been 4-5 min faster, but the nice thing is that as a team we managed 3rd - obviously achieving this depends somewhat on who turns up from the other states, but we've done it for the 3rd year in a row now :)

C • :-)) 7